Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

There was a little piece on the high antioxidant/nutrition content of purple carrots on one of the Australian pretent-to-be-news-but-are-really-just-a-large-infomercial show.

http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=990665

Got me thinking as I like the heirloom/nearly extinct vegie varieties and want to put some in my AP system.

What success have people had with what varienties of the weird and wonderful?

me? almost 0.
I had great success with a broad leafed thyme, but all my fancy tomatoes refused to grow. Lemongrass died. That's as fancy as I've got.
boysenberries are going great guns.

I grow heirloom carrots, raddish, Tomato's, and melons at the moment Simo and they go great except for the cottage carrots, and remember the BYAP shop has a great range of heirloom seeds, well they did so hope they do

I have been growing 'normal' carrots in my system. I am finding that they are not sweet at all. They do not taste nice. I have been harvesting them while they are very small, I don't know if I need to wait till they grow bigger. Our heirloom tomatoes are growing well. Still waiting for them to ripen

I have the purple heirloom variety growing at the moment. My boys love em. They are about 5" in length now and going well. I have had one to see what they taste like and considering they are nowhere near mature, they taste very sweet. I'll go get a pic now.

pics

more...

I remember reading somewhere that the original carrots were purple?

In any case, so far they are a success! I will let a few go to seed this year and save the seeds and see how I go next season.

Quachy

Was only going through my seed collection today. I've got 150+ heirloom(or just funny looking) packets of seeds. I think it makes a great change to see different vegies. My sweet corn and Max hybrid corn are on there last run and I've got a Red Aztec heirloom to follow. I plant a lot in the dirt but the AP gets a few. Most of the seeds are not treated so its a plus. The Mideast Lebanese Zucchini from http://www.thelostseed.com.au is great. It is still good pan fried when forgotten and let grow too big cos I didn't remember to check on them.

I have been trying the Red Aztec but so far have only had a 30-40% seedling rate! I don't know what I am doing wrong, the other sweet corn I have from Eden Seeds were about 95% but for some reason the Aztec have not sprouted as well as I had hoped. I have them in punnets or organic potting mix and have sunk the punnets into the AP gravel so the mix stays moist through wicking. They are out in the sun but very little action. Been about 2 weeks now for my third lot (trying to stagger the crop) of Aztec. Oh well, maybe next year from a different supplier?

I've been reading about using hydrogen peroxide mix with water to soak seeds in before planting. hydrogen peroxide converts to h20 and a spare o so it gets more oxygen in with the water. Haven't tried it yet. You can also keep the temp up to help germinate. And when the corn flowers, manualy make sure the silk gets covered. And check out the moon cycle for the best time to plant.

I believe making stuff look bigger with the aid of undersized human offspring has been ruled acceptable - just, however do you REALLY expect me to believe you drive that ute to work?

Bloody great forest you have there...

I'm really a very very short person

Should have zoomed in further and left the star picket out of the picket... then it will look like a forest...

We have packets of the purple dragon carrot seed here at the shop if anyone is interested. Might have to go and plant a packet myself.

Just on the taste of heirloom veggies, I think a few people especially the younger gen x and y have only tasted supermarket GM veggies hence think that proper veggies taste like crap, but reality is they taste like they should, was an art in cooking veggies when I was a wee lad we have always grown dirt garden veggies and a lot of HL's and always look forward to them and get extremely disappointed when we run out and have to go back to the shop, hence the AP, these days the GM crap in places like Coles etc are made to look good and last longer but in doing that they loose taste, what do others think?